Then the miller remarks: “Ostez-vous, car je me conchye.” The wife and the priest pull the sick man to the edge of the bed and place him in such a position that if the doctrine of soul-departure by the anus be true, they may witness the miller’s final performance. The phenomenon of rectal flatulence is now observed, when suddenly, to the consternation of the wife and priest, a demon appears and placing a sack over the dying miller’s anus, catches the rectal gas and flies off in sulphurous vapor.—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 84, translated from “Le Moyen Age Médical,” by Dupouy.) It was generally believed in Europe that the eggs of the Basilisk or Cockatrice could only be hatched by a toad or by the heat of a manure-pile.—(See “Mélusine,” Paris, January-February, 1890, p. 20.) Ireland has been called the “Urinal of the Planets” from the constant and copious rains which visit it.—(See Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.) The Apaches have a myth, or story, the analogue of the “Fee-fo-Fum” of our own childhood; but the giant, instead of smelling the blood of an Englishman, in the words given in Spanish, “huele la cagada.” The Chinese myth concerning the wonderful digestive powers of the “Mih” has its counterpart in the ancient belief that the same power was possessed by the Ostrich. “The Wangwana and Wanyumbo informed me ... that if the elephant observes the excrement of the rhinoceros unscattered, he waxes furious, and proceeds instantly in search of the criminal, when woe befall him if he is sulky, and disposed to battle for the proud privilege of leaving his droppings as they fall. The elephant, in that case, breaks off a heavy branch of a tree, or uproots a stout sapling like a boat’s mast, and belabors the unfortunate beast until he is glad to save himself by hurried flight. For this reason, the natives say, the rhinoceros always turns round and thoroughly scatters what he has dropped.”—(“Through the Dark Continent,” Henry M. Stanley, New York, 1878, vol. i. p. 477.) “In other myths, in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates man from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man, etc.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 248. See also under chapter on the Mistletoe, p. 99 of this volume.) “Moffatt is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.” (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Lang, vol. i. p. 91.) Perhaps this tale belongs to our series of myths. “The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it attribute to mankind.”—(Idem, Lang, vol. i. p. 170.)